Nintendo continues to take significant flak over their E3 press conference. Analysts that we have spoken with confirm that Nintendo just didn’t deliver despite a strong opening with the announcement of Pikmin 3.

Stockholders must also be convinced that this is the case, as Nintendo’s stock fell 2.68 percent in Japan. While Nintendo showed an impressive list of partners, the fact that Activision is not one of them and only one game announced by Electronic Arts is being viewed by analysts that we spoke with as an indication both publishers are taking a wait and see approach to the console, as they just are not sure how well it is going to sell.

Our impression is that we are still left with more questions than answers, as we still don’t really know how powerful the console is and what it is going to cost. We have to agree with analysts that we spoke with that a lot will depend on the price that Nintendo can deliver the Wii U at; and right now, that still is a big unknown, with Nintendo saying that pricing will not be announced till later in the year near its release this holiday season.

Nintendo has confirmed that in addition to the Wii U GamePad it will also be offering a regular controller. The controller, interestingly enough, will be called the Nintendo Wii U Pro Controller. The news isn’t surprising, as Nintendo claims that they want to court hardcore gamers that have shunned the Nintendo in the recent past.

The Wii U Pro Controller bears a striking resemblance to an Xbox 360 controller and given the fact that the 360 controller is so popular, it is not surprising that Nintendo decided to emulate something close to the 360 controller design.

We don’t know much more about the Pro Controller yet, but we suspect that there actually isn’t much more to tell beyond the fact that the introduction of the Pro Controller this early in the game solidifies that Nintendo believes this is necessary at the start to attract hard core game players. The question is what games they will play; and we will learn more about that at the Nintendo press conference at E3.

Diffie is the VP of information security and cryptography at ICANN, who laid the foundation for the public key infrastructure which now helps secure the Internet. Diffie said that good guys can't exist without bad guys and the comment explains the rise of cybercriminals and groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec.

He said that one of the most important things for good cryptography and security in the age of the Internet is good code. Unfortunately, really good code is generally too expensive to write. He said that humanity is moving into a software age as we moved into an iron age.

This means that there needs to be a good plan to secure software. To do that a developer needs to know exactly what the purpose is of the application is going to be to make it more secure. They need to write good code when some of the current programming languages are vastly inaccurate. Some languages actually encourage buffer overflows, Diffie said.

Writing code is almost always a trade off. While in the 1970s it was thought possible to get full formal proof of the code, achieving that is not a realistic scenario, because of the cost involved. He said that all good code is expensive and more money should be spend on writing really good code so applications can become secure, he said.

Browser sandboxes are created to confine code but people need to realise that way of working is inadequate for a lot of applications.

Epic Games will be at the upcoming Game Developers Conference that runs from March 5th to March 9th. The company will be hosting press sessions and meeting with developers to show off its new next-generation Unreal Engine 4 game technology.

As if a sneak preview of the new Unreal Engine 4 technology is not enough, Epic is going further by having a dozen senior Epic staff members speak and give presentations at the Conference. Cliff Blezinski will also be hosting the Gamer Developer Choice Awards.

It is expected that the preview of the Unreal Engine 4 will give a glimpse of what we can expect from the next-generation of game consoles and the games that will be built for them. Epic is hoping that many developers will embrace the Unreal Engine 4 technology as the foundation to power their next-generation titles.

As China was accused of mounting a five-year hacking operation in which industrial and national secrets were stolen on an unprecedented scale, software giant Microsoft started a contest aimed at turning the tables on hackers. Microsoft's plans, launched at a computer security conference in Las Vegas, include prizes for innovative tactics to foil cyber attacks.

Dubbed the BlueHat Prize, Microsoft will reward research that defends against entire types of cyber attacks. The downside is that the scheme will replace ''bounties'' for those who discover individual computer bugs in Microsoft software.

Redmond hopes that if enough people stick brain power into solving system problems they will make it too hard for hackers to take down systems. We would suspect that anyone who can come up with a system that defeats denial of service attacks should be given a lot of dosh, a knighthood and two week's sex with a celebrity of their choice.